Blogs can often flounder — stuck in mediocrity or jumping from subject to subject with few connections. Even if your blog has a clear theme, you may face stretches of time when ideas don’t come and important blog structure designs become hard to make.

At times like these, the purpose of your blog grows paramount. To produce clear results, you need to set clear goals. Unfortunately, many people manage a blog without having stated objectives.

Here are six common goals, and what to keep in mind in order to reach them as you continue to post.

1. Awareness

Awareness is a common but nebulous goal for many blogs. Posters want to raise awareness of their work, their business, their brand, etc. What this often comes down to is simple metrics: where your blog shows up in searches and how frequently it’s being accessed.

Reaching awareness goals is a matter of simple gap analysis. You need to know your current stats, and the stats you want to achieve. Then it becomes largely a matter of selecting the right keywords and other SEO tactics while tapping into popular topics.

Google Analytics and similar tools work well for analyzing most blogs and setting up strong strategies.

2. Entertainment

Sometimes, a blog exists merely to entertain. People want fans to laugh, cry (in a good way), subscribe, and share with friends. If you fall into this group, you’ll want to spend a lot of effort on the content itself.

Make your content varied: try out infographics, videos, photo galleries, drawings, Vines, and other types of media. Make your text easy to read. Work on your tone, individual style, and topic specializations, too. Find a smart, fun way to express yourself in everything you do.

3. Money

If you want your blog to make money, you need to focus on ad space. This is a cross between managing your ad space well and focusing the metric-based “Awareness” goal.

Devote plenty of research to the different types of ads and what ad rates you should charge for them. (The Internet is full of opinions and benchmark data on this.) If your brand is especially powerful, consider opening your own store as well to sell branded products.

4. Sales

Sales differs from money-oriented objectives, because the goal is typically to redirect readers toward a business website to buy products. In this case, you want very clear calls to action and links to specific products and purchasing windows.

Focus your content on more useful information, such as ways to use products or services, DIY tips, and industry news that ties into what you’re selling.

5. Discussion

If you want lots of discussion and conversation on your blog, choose plugins that make commenting easier and more enjoyable. Set aside time to reply to certain comments on your blog and social network sites alike.

Create topics that ask readers for an opinion, idea, or critique that will create a positive flow of conversation. Allowing commenters to post links and share the blog easily with friends is useful for facilitating discussion, too.

6. Business value

This is a more abstract goal, but is common for companies looking for ways to increase the value of their brand and company. This makes it easier to create licensing arrangements or develop partner relationships. It can also increase a company’s reputation and even help owners sell their business at an appropriate time, whether in North America or Australia.

Communicating ideas to customers, giving readers new tools, and explaining products or services can all raise business value. If you produce news releases, include more in-depth explanations on your blog, too. Deep industry analysis will also impress potential buyers.

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